Lilium
by K0USAGI
Summary: (Lacewoodshipping, Kalosshipping) A bad dream wrapped in a sweet reverie. One would think life a fantasy fulfilled when given the opportunity to share it with the object of one's obsession. But secrets and sealed lips hold the match that will burn a paradise to ash. Mild darkfic.


**1. Queen**

When had it begun? When had the deity of simultaneous love and cruelty decided to make a jester out of Augustine Sycamore? Reason said it was the day of the parade, when he saw Serena to be the Champion of Kalos, the bravest of the youths who had saved countless lives. The day she had smiled at him with the same grey eyes he'd been struck by a year prior. Emotion argued against this entirely—the moment she claimed him was the moment she climbed onto his lap, one summer evening three months after she'd hunted him down from Vaniville. The moment that she looped her slender arms around his shoulders and blessed his lips with her kiss—when he had told her the first lie, "I feel for you as I would any precious friend, Serena. It's… truly nothing more."

Despite hollow protests, Augustine let her steal clandestine kisses any moment she chose. Be it in the depths of secret or riding the deadly edge of the overt.

"Please, Professor… I need you," Serena had pleaded, her voice hushed into the curve of his neck. He could only reply with a miserably soft, but guiltily pleasured sigh. Her touch was fire meeting and boring through ice. Augustine had gone too long ignoring his own cravings for touch. Perhaps even longer, fantasies of _her_ touch.

Certainly, it had begun when she decided it would. Her first move set their game into play. Augustine lost quickly, a monarch claimed by an enemy Queen in just a few short strokes and one fell swoop.

It was pointless to question her, back then, or in the present, two years since her rise to power in Kalos. The Queen desired him and he was her humble servant. In one blessing of her silk lips, he'd forgotten life—long and lonesome life—before her reign.

_Darling, you are a tyrant._

**2. Confession**

"When did it start for you?" Augustine asked, breaking the silence in their bed. Serena's fingertips traced a vein along his knuckles as she lay beside him. He heard her giggle softly, a sound like a goddess's harp, as she wiggled her naked body against his own. Each gold curl on her cherubic head smelled of lilies.

"When did what start?"

"This," Augustine said, stifling a sigh as she rolled her hips against his. His arms tightened around her with subtle hunger. Heat and need were steadily flowing into his core and below all while she teased in coquettish innocence.

"A long time ago, really." Serena said, a hint of confession in her voice. Sobering, she turned to face him. She was all lights and porcelain in a sea of black sheets. His little Queen slipped one arm around her equally bare lover, "Would you be offended if I said I loved you for years before I even really met you?"

Augustine smiled and shook his head, "No… perhaps a bit flattered."

When she smiled and glanced sideward, her eyes were all lashes. A flutter and then a glance upward into that stormy sky of hers.

"When I met you… you were so much more than the dreams, y'know. I like you better in person than in glossy pictures."

Tracing a fingertip across her soft cheek, Augustine confessed with a chuckle, "I suppose I'm guilty of the same dreams, then. You stood out in all of those trainer dossiers… it was something like the earth glimpsing the sun on a rainy day."

Serena laughed again, giving his shoulder a playful punch, "You flatterer."

"It's the honest truth, _ma déesse_. You'll have to forgive me for all the lies I told you in the beginning… trying to pretend I wasn't utterly taken by you the moment you walked in."

Her gaze and her expression softened, though her smile didn't falter. Augustine could feel her gaze on him and all the love within it. It was the same admiration of perfection with which he looked upon her. In that beat of silence, he felt that he could truly die a happy man to have loved and been loved by this girl.

"I'm happy you noticed me, Augustine."

"I should be the one saying that to you."

**3. Lust**

Perhaps he was just a selfish mortal in a world belonging to a goddess. In the time they shared, baring souls and bodies, nothing existed outside of her dominion. Never once did the thought cross his mind that she could ever love another. They were stricken by the kind of love one would describe as a fever of limerence, perhaps some shared, obsessive madness for one another. Each moment alone, they stole each other's touches and walked away from each other with bruises in places only they could see.

In the beginning, their affairs had been so hidden. Each cry muffled beneath his palm, each scream made surreptitious by her shushes and whispers; had it surprised him at all that he found such thrill in this? Not particularly. Well into the intoxication they called a romance, Serena reminded him just how much thrill he could find in mild exhibitionism. She was a young woman with some wicked brand of insatiability, leaving him with burns from tightly bound ropes and little burns from where he'd come too close to the sun.

It didn't take long for him to forget what it felt like to sleep alone in his bed. By three months into their relationship, he'd already felt married to some mildly nymphomaniacal bride. It was hardly a scenario any hot-blooded man would even dream of critiquing. Should she need him, should she crave him, he was on his knees—perhaps because he always needed her.

"Tell me you need me, _m'ange_…"

Her fingers were curled through his hair, pulling as she gasped his name, "I need you! Ah—I, I need you!"

"Scream it, darling."

**4. Vivid**

"This is the third New Year's Eve we've spent together, y'know."

"It hardly feels like it's been that long." Augustine watched the lights dance across the Prism Tower's frame, colors made festive for the holidays. Snow floated around them with all the softness of angel's breath. Serena moved closer against his chest, still cold despite the numerous layers and coats she wore. It was a warm enough night for December, Augustine had thought, but he never minded being there to warm her.

"Time flies when you're having fun." Serena said, before adding in a whisper, "Or a whole lot of a fucking."

Augustine stifled a laugh. Sometimes she could make him laugh like a teenage boy. Silly little things or the occasional crude joke… they were perfect in her voice.

"I'd like time to just stop, sometimes." Serena said, "The best moments really do go by too quickly."

"I've always taken that as a sign to make as many perfect moments as possible. The ones that actually do stop time. That you remember decades later in absolute detail. Otherwise life is a blur when it could be long and vivid."

Serena looked to be mulling over this, before she nodded and agreed, "Let's do that, then. Make the whole thing long and vivid. As many moments as we can."

**5. Losing**

_I'm losing her_, Augustine realized when he caught her lingering gaze on Calem's profile. It had been a thought born of no prompting, but rather, a simple observation. Calem was hastily describing the Moltres he'd seen on the westernmost shores of Kalos. His eyes were bright with excitement. Serena's were as well.

Augustine kept his smile, one of pride in his protégé, yet for the first time he found it to be hollow. As though the very earth beneath the sea had fallen away beneath the swell. The drop in his mood was cataclysmic, but no one would see. Not even Serena. Not on that day.

_I am simply paranoid. A paranoid old fool._

Calem had finished his story, breathless from his excited ramblings. All the lights in his life were shining at that moment and when he glanced sideward to Serena, she didn't look away.

**6. Drift**

_You're spending more and more time with him._

Serena walked with Augustine, hand-in-hand, telling what was clearly the most riveting Shauna story of the week. Her lips moved and her voice was its usual melody. Augustine heard, but he found that on this particular afternoon, he could not listen. She walked with a skip in her step, her commonplace cheer. He kept up just barely. In her story, Shauna had spilled spaghetti all over Calem's kitchen. Serena was at her cutest and her brightest when she told stories that made her laugh.

_You're asleep when I climb into bed beside you these nights. But it only cuts because I'm as pathetically libidinous as I am selfish._

She paused her story to notice someone across the plaza and wave. A trainer Augustine had never met. Some younger girl with fluffy black braids and one wide-eyed Espurr. Serena's hand slipped free of his and she ran up ahead to throw her arms around this girl. Emma, as she was introduced. Polite, short, mildly pear-shaped and all the cutest politeness he'd seen in a girl her age. Serena introduced him as her "darling" and he felt himself blush, just a touch. The girls spoke of a recent convention and of the recent gossip on Lumiose's streets. More sounds on which he could not focus.

"You should join us all for the league convention at the institute! You're old enough to get drinks with us after, right?" Serena had finally tugged Augustine's attention at her mention of the boy. Of course, he was still well melted into the background as she invited her old, dear friend to their festivities. He'd already decided weeks ago he wasn't going to make it to the Spring Convention—there was a meeting with Professor Rowan that afternoon as well as a lecture with the research committee.

"Yes, I can drink now, thank you very much." Emma had retorted playfully, "In fact, I don't think you know what I think you don't know about a cute little bar by Vernal."

"I probably don't, but you can paint me interested, girlie."

_A convention for trainers. Trainers who battle at the institute. A gathering of friends, drinking and folly in the evening. Would she look at Calem again as she did two weeks ago, but this time with a glass of wine in one hand? Did she even drink wine when she was around boys her age?_

He'd jumped a bit at her touch when her fingers gracefully slipped between his. Augustine was snapped from his anxious reverie and Emma was nowhere to be seen. Had his daydream been that opaque?

"Hey, you alright?" Serena had asked.

Augustine nodded, "I'm fine."

**7. Nap**

Serena napped more than usual in the summers. Often, Augustine could find her on the sofa, passed out beneath a book or two, deep in slumber. He should have figured she'd be there, that afternoon he went out to look for a particular folder of paperwork. As he glanced at the table on which he'd most definitely (but clearly hadn't) left that folder, he saw her napping, cozy and fast asleep. She was cuter every time he caught her, that much he'd decided years ago.

A grin was rising on his lips as he quietly knelt beside the sofa. She was drooling a bit. Silencing a laugh, he snapped a picture on his phone and then resumed his hunt for the lost folder.

**8. Ginger**

"I hate being sick…" Serena was a sobbing mess, curled up on the bathroom floor in the fluffiest pink bathrobe she had. Augustine patted her shoulder, hardly feeling well himself. He rarely ever got sick, but when he did, it was nine times out of ten from cuddling her during colds or fevers.

"I feel so gross and ugly."

"Hush, love, you're not gross or ugly." Augustine was on his back beside her, holding a cold towel over his eyes. He reached for her clumsily, petting her head, "You're cute when you're sick. But not when you get me sick."

"Shut up you big tree!" Serena growled jabbing him in the side.

He cackled, trying to inch away from her. She sniffled and wiped her tears on her sleeve. Serena clung to him, though her limbs felt so weak and tired. Despite the pounding in his head, he relaxed into her touch. He leaned in closer, kissing her exposed collarbone. Her skin was so hot from her frustrated sobbing. A sigh escaped her, he could feel her breath against his mop of curls. Before he could further steal tenderness from her, she began to shove him away from her.

"_Mmf_… get out! Get out, get out, get out!"

"Wha—" Augustine sat up and was shoved out of the bathroom quickly.

"Get out, get out, get out!" She slammed the door behind him and he stared in confusion before understanding her sudden urgency.

They both spent the evening sipping ginger ale. He fell asleep by the bathroom door, and she, on the floor. It was hardly their first shared, ill evening together, nor would it be the last. It did seem to be happening with more frequency that summer.

**9. Hatred**

Autumn came with a unique semester at the Lumiose University—he had volunteered to step in for the Ecosystem Ecology course, alongside his others. It just so happened that a certain, bothersome boy would be attending his every lecture, eagerly devouring his every word with eyes just as bright as Serena's.

"If it isn't my favorite pupil, once again." Augustine addressed Calem—he was all bitterness under the saccharine greeting. Calem was oblivious to any misgivings. Rightfully so.

Daily, Augustine had to remind himself, all wrongdoings were purely in his head. The worries of a paranoid, and jealous lover standing side-by-side with a young man three quarters of his own age and a hundred more, his own beauty. At Calem's age, Augustine could recall his own vanity. The boy had grown since the day they first met—they now stood eye to eye. Calem reminded Augustine of himself in more ways than one.

It was impossible to hold any grudge against Calem, from a Professor to student. Calem was an overachiever of the sharpest sort.

…and he always struck up chit-chat with Serena when she came to visit.

_She's here to visit me, if you please._

"Better not be giving him a hard time." Serena told Calem from the safety of Augustine's arms. He unconsciously held her tighter, feigning a laugh.

_I'm so afraid to let go of you. I'm so much more of a damned child than he is._

"I'm making us dinner tonight. It's going to be a surprise." Serena told him, planting a kiss on Augustine's lips. He could taste cherry chapstick. The taste would linger in his mind for the rest of the day. He nodded and said, "Then let me bring us some wine. It'll be a surprise."

"Ooh, well alright, then. You've got yourself a deal, mister." His coquette darling replied.

Their all-too-short visit ended as students began filtering into the lab. Serena kissed him goodbye and made her way out. She waved to Calem. He'd waved to her. Augustine tried to reason in his mind—harmless, yes, just harmless friendship—all while remembering that Calem had been horrid at hiding how much he'd loved Serena since they were children.

It was that moment, that afternoon, that Calem looked in Augustine's direction and caught a look. It was scarcely there, but for the first time, Calem seemed to understand a thing that had not yet been said.

_Every smile I give you is a lie._

When Calem didn't look away, Augustine understood that the sentiment was mutual.

**10. Fist**

"Just stop bothering me about him. I'm tired of this. I'm going to bed."

With one hand stopping the door, his hold gentle, Augustine pleaded, "Please, be honest with me. Just tell me this is all in my head, at the very least."

Serena stepped back into the doorway, her voice sharp, "It's all in your head. You're acting crazy. Good night, Augustine."

It wasn't enough. It wasn't enough, he murmured, "Why can't I believe that, then?"

"I don't know, why can't you? Why can't you trust me to be friends with Calem? We grew up together, he's always going to be close to me. Get over that."

Augustine's palm, once flat against the door's surface, made a fist, "I can't."

"Why not? Am I just never allowed to talk to him again? Even look at him? Are we not allowed to be in the same building together anymore?"

"That's not… that's not what I meant."

"He's my best friend and that's all."

His knuckles were paling from the tightness of his grip, "Promise me, please, promise me you'd never lie about that, Serena."

She shook her head, more embittered than ever. She slammed the door shut and he could hear her crying.

_Stupid, stupid fool._

Augustine ran a hand through his hair, groaning and then cursing.

_Why couldn't you promise me that?_

That tight, furious fist landed one ugly hole in the wall. He slept alone that night, after picking the splinters from his fist and bandaging a few small cuts.

Calem asked about it the following day. It very nearly put a hole in the miserable, oblivious boy's face. Instead, however, Augustine just smiled the false smiles he'd become so accustomed to and said, "Just being a bit careless."


End file.
